The back office

There have been a few changes to the back office arrangements.

In light of the fact that Dame Alison and I were no longer in schools we had a bit of a dilemma in terms of how to continue to administratively run #LearningFirst events, and as Alison moved on to the Chartered College circumstances obviously changed. Although committed to supporting as many events as she possibly can, her focus is now rightly on her new role.

I, therefore, took advice about the most appropriate way of dealing with the administrative side of the conferences and the result is that I have set up a company @BeyondLevels Ltd, which allows me to keep all of the finances associated with the conferences separate from any of my personal finances.

You may have noticed that I have started to charge a £5.oo booking fee. This is to cover some of the costs associated with the conferences. I also hoped that by charging a nominal fee, it would encourage folk to take their booking a bit more seriously. Prior to charging, there were always 15 to 20 people who didn’t attend on the day, which meant that others, who could have had their ticket, lost out. Interestingly, in Chester, which was the first time the fee was charged, the opposite happened. There were people still requesting a ticket on the morning of the conference. So, it seems to have worked.